User blog:JM Viking/Changes to SMC I'd like to see in the near future
It is not the lack of champions, skill swaps or weapons that make newbies quit this game. In fact, less content makes the game faster to learn and thus possibly more fun for these newbies. So in general, the lack of content is currently not the main problem in SMC, although a few more maps could help a little. If I was one of the devs of SMC, I'd concentrate on fixing the issues in reliability, scalability, the interface, the matchmaking and gameplay on general level. Below I wrote a big list of more specific points that I would really want to see changed in the near future. I feel almost all of the items in it are important and/or easy to do, but could possibly be overlooked by the devs forever, preventing this game from ever becoming really successfull. The list is so big that I decided to write it in a form of wiki blog, instead of writing it directly as a reply onto the Holiday Wishlist topic on SMC forums. Even though many of the items in the list should be fast to implement or fix, I'm sure the SMC devs cannot do all that in a couple of weeks. I just wish you implement as many as possible before fully releasing the game to hook as many new players as possible :) My wishlist A. Bug/glitch fixes and related wishes #Fix the chat not shown bug. The chat should be always visible, unless you add a setting that can change the behaviour to e.g. only show after new messages. As already suggested in the forums by anDe92, it would also be very nice to have the option to use the classic solution: New messages are automatically shown for about ten seconds, and then get hidden. When typing a chat message, show all of the most recent messages. As also suggested in the forums by jotun, it should be possible to open up a window that shows all or almost all of the public/team/any messages sent so far. #Fix the destroyers getting stuck. Own destroyer advancing slower gives a great advantage. #Do not let champions in the respawn area pick up anything, especially the plunderball, as that is game breaking (this problem was posted on the forums by charms). #Fix the champion specific weapon blue print tool tip for the third slot. #Fix friend status incorrectly being offline (despite having some other state in chats). Also fix incorrect statuses of any players elsewhere (quite common as well). #Destroy without explosion (or hide and make non-damaging) VooGhoul's bombs that are thrown into pits (e.g. in Siege). B. Miscellaneous wishes #Make the buttons for opening the console, taking a screenshot and suicide configurable. #*Make the default button for console something else than F12 as that is the default key for taking screenshots in Steam (and, unfortunately, the button has to be the same in every Steam game). #*All competitive games with respawning should have suicide bindable to a configurable key. #Callout improvements: ##Disable callout hotkeys while typing chat messages. Reduces a lot of unavoidable callout spam / allows choosing easier to press callout hotkeys. ##Change the callouts "Attack this location" and "Defend this location" to "Attack" and "Defend". It is usually useless to plan to attack the location you are already at and attacking. The more general forms fit better for choosing tactics in public games. ##A callout "Carrier switch" should be added (in Conquest this could be something else). Because of the "I require assistance" callout, the "Follow me" callout is of little use, and could maybe be replaced. #Training Routine improvements: ##Raise Training Routines limit from ten to 30−100. Currently, every training routine has to be used by almost 3 champions in average, and you cannot really have extra training routines for different weapons/badges/strategies or boosting received CC or EXP. However, without groups, having a huge number of routines makes it hard and slow to find and select the routine you want to equip or edit (see B.3.3.3.). ##Enable reordering of training routines. Manually copying contents and renaming them is far from fun, especially when there are a lot of routines. ##Enable making groups (more than there are champions), raise the training routines limit to 100−300. ##Bug fixes: Make saving changes to training routine work more reliably and also fix the bug of training icons freezing while dragging and dropping. ##Make the training routine list elements thinner to save space and make selection quicker. Restrict the character count of the routine name more to force one-line names. ##A bit less important feature: During champion selection, enable making of ad-hoc training routines based on any saved training routine after owning n training routines (10<=n<=50). #Remove "friend name online" messages (these are just an annoyance, especially when in-game as they pop up on the chat area). #Cancel starting a match if at least one of the players (excluding spectators) does not get a connection to a server (before the champion selection starts). This should happen both in lobbies and queues. #Make it easier to find out what friends/alliance members and other players are doing and where they are playing or spectating. The more there are players and rooms, the more important this is. ##Add a room filter that filters out rooms that do not have any friends or alliance members in them. ##Show player names when the cursor is on a lobby, just like in the watch list. If this takes too much server resources, update the names only on refresh (whose use frequency could be limited too). ##It would be nice to have separate states for "busy", "playing" and "spectating". For people outside the alliance and the viewed player's friends, all these three could show up as "busy". Others would see the state more accurately and could also click a shortcut in the player's pop-up window to jump to the related position in the lobbies or watch list. Manually set states "busy", "away" and "offline" should be automatically overriden when playing or spectating. Manually set state "offline" should also be automatically overriden when in a lobby, and always automatically overriden to alliance members and friends. ##When not playing/spectating/in a lobby, the automatically chosen state should be "away" after the player has not pressed any buttons/moved the mouse (or the equivalent thing for a game pad), for two minutes. In the case the player is in a lobby or is playing, the player will also be auto-kicked. When the passiviness is about to lead to an auto-kick, the player should be warned with a message appearing onto the middle of the screen 20 seconds in advance (the message would show the time left). (Auto-kicking inactive hosts from their own rooms has been suggested before by anDe92.) ##The current colors of the states are a bit unintuitive: a player who is "away" (yellow) is currently probably harder to contact than a person who is "busy" (red). However, with automatic "away" state, it could be harder to say. Anyway, I'd suggest following colors: ##*Offline: gray ##*Active: green ##*Away: black ##*Busy (including hidden substates "playing" and "spectating"): orange ##*Playing: red ##*Spectating: yellow #Nerf the badge Energy Shield a little more, e.g. to "when health is below 20 %, up to 35 % of damage is taken from energy instead of health". #Some newbie friendliness: ##Always show all crafting blue prints, always show (all of the possible) results of the current blue print, only allow crafting the current blue print. Would be a lot more newbie-friendly than the current solution. ##When a new player starts playing SMC, all Champions should be equipped with the default workout routine. Also, when going to the Coach/Training screen, it should open the first training routine by default, not some non-existent training routine that can be edited but not saved. #Show the results and the total time played in the ending screen (like in other games). #Create settings for choosing the opacity of certain GUI elements, especially the big map, possibly also the scoreboard and the lower bar. #Add a setting that enables ignoring clicks on the lower bar and the stats button so that basic attacks will be done instead. #Make the champion stats show up and dissappear immediately, or make a setting that enables having it so. The current slow animations reminds me of the impractical GUIs shown in sci-fi movies. If it were possible to have quick peeks, learning the details of the game would become easier. #Lobby suggested level interval improvements: ##Allow setting the lower and the upper bound separately. ##Warn when joining a room with suggested levels that do not match, possibly also when joining as a spectator, as spectators often join as players in the end. #Allow any player (including spectators) in a room to invite players with the icon (not just the master). Having to type a long or complicated name is often slower and not user-friendly. #Do not remember filter settings in the shop, Coach/Champions menu or champion selection screen (except for the duration of the same champion selection). Definitely do not spread the text input in the searched text filter from page to page. #Enable clicking of partially visible elements in scroll-bar boxes (especially in the champion selection window) #Make champion selection faster and easier. ##More champions should be visible in the champion selection screen. ###Maybe add one or two more columns (maybe depending on the current aspect ratio) ###Maybe add another view where all champions can be seen at the same time, or a one with at least somewhat smaller icons. ##Replace the non-working filter system (at least the text box) with the common "type n first letters to jump to right spot" GUI technique. ##Add a champion drop box for quick and safe reselection when one has already selected some champion. This should use a similar seek system as mentioned above. #Better, GUI standards conforming text editing. Moving the cursor and editing text in the middle of a message is currently very frustrating. The caret should not be shown as a temporary extra character. Also cut, copy and paste do not work. #Show own nickname last in the titles of private chats, so that the partial titles at the bottom of the screen are more useful. #Auto-censoring improvements: ##Filter invisible characters out of chat messages (e.g. ctrl+backspace). (They are sometimes used to bypass the auto-censcoring.) ##In chats, do not auto-censor the common substring "n't it". #Dynamic limitations that successfully scale the "all chat" system when a lot of players are online (not to make the game and servers lag and to make the chat more comfortable to use). Examples: #*Make flood protection stricter as the number of players grow, especially for players with a low coach level and/or prestige. #*Stop loading of every player's info (name, avatar and state) after a certain number of chatters is reached (actually use two thresholds or some other solution not to make the mode oscillate at the border case). Steam's group chats seem to use a similar solution. #In chats and lobbys, show muted player names in e.g. red (it is very hard to remember which people you have muted a long time ago). Possibly also show friends in e.g. green. #When kicking a player out of a room, also ask if you want to ban the player from the room for e.g. 1 minute ##Also show the player name in the window to prevent giving accidental bans to wrong players. ##Add checkbox for muting the player to kick. #Limit slot change frequency in lobbies to make trolls easier to kick (and ban). #When a match is about to get started, do not make unready spectators automatically join the match. Instead, make them automatically join after 10 seconds has elapsed. During that waiting time, show a dialog window where you can cancel the auto-joining (making them quit the lobby instead) or choose to join immediately. #During a match, let spectators to see public chat (suggested by jotun). Makes spectating more enjoyable. #During champion selection when highlander mode is off, do not let the spectators (potential spies) see the champions chosen before all teams do. #During champion selection when highlander mode is on, do not show the current badge, weapon and training routine selected to the enemy team and spectators until the very end when all the loadouts are final. Moreover, showing the champion chosen to enemy team and spectators before confirmation does not make sense. #Enable viewing of the scoreboard during the start of the match. This gives some extra time to examine the load-outs. #Improve matchmaking in queues. ##The skills of rookies vary so much that their skill level or usefulness to a team might be impossible to estimate. Therefore, to reduce the problems they cause in queues, new restrictions need to be made. Players with a coach level under 10 could be separated completely in the matchmaking system. However, some players remain to seem completely lost even after reaching the level 10, at least on game types they have not much experience in. What also could be done, is to prevent players from queuing for a certain gametype before they have won at least one standard match in that gametype (practise matches and other matches with bots would also count). ##The maximum difference between the highest and the lowest coach level in a certain match should be limited in matchmaking. This would be to make the matches more enjoyable and to make successfull matchmaking easier. I think 20 would be a good default, at least when enough players are online. Queuers could also be provided an option that allows raising the limit to 30. C. AI related wishes: #Some basic bot/minion AI improvements ##They should never get stuck in the spawn areas ##They shouldn't bypass normal collision detection (e.g. going inside a siege base or Scathe flying through static walls). ##They should be able to attack a round Siege/Gauntlet base with melee basic attacks without confusion. ##They shouldn't think they can get to a nearby enemy on the other side of a wall corner by running through the corner. ##Bots should not get stuck at cliffs that can be jumped on. ##When a bot's path is blocked by a turret or an egg that has no enemy on them, they should try to jump over that obstacle. This is an easy partial solution to the problematic dynamic path finding problem. ##Bots should leave enemy Platymus eggs alone (not attack them), unless there is at least one enemy on top of it. ##Bots should grab energy pickups at least when very low on energy and when an energy pickup is close enough. ##The threshold for stopping looking for/getting healing should be much higher than the threshold used to start finding healing. Currently bots low on health tend to uselessly travel back and forth. ##Bots should not cheat and see cloaked players that are not carrying anything visible. Instead, they could extrapolate the movement of a hiding champion for about 1.2 seconds and then give up if they do not get the character visible again. #Bots existing in a match since the beginning should have some simple training routines, badges and higher level weapons that are chosen dynamically in the beginning of the match to adjust to the skill levels of the players (and possibly the champion used by the bot to make bots playing different champions perform more consistently). This would make bots tougher without making them cheat. D. Website related wishes #Add dynamic pages for getting all kinds of information about each existing alliance, including the name, tag, level, alliance badges, leaders, officers and other members. Similarly, information about each existing registered player should be available (at least name, alliance, title, avatar, coach level and prestige). In the F2P game Brawl Busters (that got closed this autumn), I really liked being able to search for that kind of community information on the webpage. Some things to note *I tried to mention highest priority wishes first while also trying to group wishes about similar things together. *I have definitely forgotten some high-priority suggestions I've thought about. I will probably add a few more items to my wishlist after publishing it. *Many of the things mentioned in my wish list have probably already been mentioned elsewhere (e.g. the forums) by someone else or many other people. I don't claim to be the first one to (publicly) suggest these things. Also, when I have mentioned someone else who has suggested the same thing before me, the person mentioned might not be the first one to suggest that thing either. I have come up with almost all of the suggestions in the list myself, many a long ago, but I have then found some of these same ideas written by other people. *Out of the Holiday Wishlists posted by other players on the forum topic, I really liked jotun's and Praedyn's on the page two. Definitely read those (I really don't want to waste my and others' time by explicitly lengthening my wish list with the majority of those points). Category:Blog posts